Man sues Sony because Killzone: Shadow Fall wasn't actually 1080p

Californian man Douglas Ladore has filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony Computer Entertainment, alleging he was mislead by the publisher's claims that Killzone: Shadow Fall was rendering at a resolution of 1080p on the PlayStation 4.

Ladore claims that in many pre-release interviews and advertisements, plus on the box of the game itself, the game was touted as rendering at 1080p on Sony's 'next-gen' console. However, as Digital Foundry discovered in a post-release analysis, the multiplayer portion of the game actually renders natively at 960x1080 - half of standard 1080p - before using upscaling techniques to deliver Full HD.

The upscaling technique in question, temporal upscaling, horizontally interlaces the previous frame with the current frame to deliver output that's closer to 1080i. According to the lawsuit, the experience produced through the interlacing is "blurry to the point of distraction", not what you'd expect from true 1080p output.

Sony argued around the time of the game's release that temporal upscaling resulted in similar results to native 1080p rendering. Ladore, however, claims it's misleading to describe interlaced 1080p output as "native 1080p", accusing the company of false advertising, fraud, breach of warranty, and unjust enrichment.

He also claims that had he known that the title was not rendering natively at 1080p, he would "not have purchased Killzone at all, or would have paid substantially less for it."

The class-action suit is being represented by Edelson PC, who filed the complaint in the Northern California US District Court on August 5, demanding a trial by jury. The suit seeks "restitution in the form of disgorgement of all revenue derived from sales of Killzone: Shadow Fall".